From the Left

The left considers this a significant development in the Mueller investigation, noting that it establishes ulterior motives for Trump’s actions toward Russia, and also shows that Trump and close associates actively hid information from the American public.

From the Right

The right argues that the new revelations don’t implicate Trump in any criminal behavior.

“Robert Mueller is one step closer to showing links between Donald Trump’s business interests in Russia and his conduct as a candidate for president... Cohen’s latest revelations on their own don’t constitute evidence of a crime or impeachable offense by Trump. However, they do show that Trump was part of a negotiation that linked his status as a candidate to his business interests in Russia."

Bloomberg

“It’s true that Trump had the right to do business in Russia during the time when he was a candidate, but the public also had a right to know where his true financial interests lay. It would have been highly relevant to the public to learn that Trump was negotiating a business deal with Russia at the same time that he was proposing to change American policy toward that country. Not only was the public deprived of this information but Cohen’s guilty plea indicates that voters were actively misled about Trump’s interests."

New Yorker

“[This] undercuts Trump's sometime denials in 2016 and since that he had, as he often put it, ‘nothing to do’ with Russia. In fact he was pursuing a major deal that he suggested on Thursday he might have kept pursuing through the year and might have tried to conclude if he hadn't been elected. It means Trump world already had a channel open with Moscow at the same time the Russian government was... waging a campaign of ‘active measures’ against the U.S."

NPR

Perhaps most significantly, “Putin has been in possession of crucial information about Trump’s business interests that the president deliberately hid from the American people... Trump said [in January] that the ‘closest I came to Russia’ was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we’re just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along. That means that throughout Trump’s campaign and presidency, Putin has had the power to plunge him into political crisis."

New York Times

From the Right

The right argues that the new revelations don’t implicate Trump in any criminal behavior.

“As usual, the best posture is to avoid hyperventilating and size up the evidence as it emerges. There is still no public evidence proving a Trump-Russia campaign conspiracy... The Steele dossier was supposed to be the smoking gun, but that turned out to be a fraud. Then the famous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian functionaries was supposed to be proof of collusion, but nothing more has come of that."

Wall Street Journal

“Mueller is apparently determined to prove ‘collusion’ that is not criminal... The anti-Trump press then reports that (a) Mueller is investigating Trump–Russia collusion, (b) many Trump-campaign figures have been convicted, and (c) many Russians have been charged. No mention is made of the inconvenient facts that the Trump associates’ guilty pleas have nothing to do with Russia’s interference in the election and that the charges against Russians have nothing to do with the Trump campaign.”

National Review

Minority View: “There might not have been anything wrong with it, legally speaking; after all, Trump was still a private-sector businessman until Election Night. Politically, though, it looks bad, and it ties him to Russian interests that commingle with the Russian government."

Hot Air

“The concerning issue here is the possibility that Trump, in his recent written responses to Mueller, may have said the last time he and Cohen spoke of this project was in January 2016... In the event that they hadn’t thought of it and there does turn out to be a discrepancy between Trump and Cohen on dates, it would turn into a he said, she said situation... Were you lying then or are you lying now Michael Cohen?"

RedState

According to Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, “I think the weakness of Mueller’s substantive findings are suggested by the fact that he has to resort to false statement prosecutions, which really shows that he didn’t start with very much... These are not crimes that had been committed prior to his appointment - they’re crimes that were committed as the result of his appointment...

"That raises some questions about the role of special prosecutors in creating crimes, or creating opportunities for crimes to be committed.”